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The English modal auxiliary verbs are a subset of the English auxiliary verbs used mostly to express modality, properties such as possibility and obligation. [a] They can most easily be distinguished from other verbs by their defectiveness (they do not have participles or plain forms [b]) and by their lack of the ending ‑(e)s for the third-person singular.
mustn’t: must not mustn’t’ve: must not have must’ve: must have ’neath (informal) beneath needn’t: need not nal (informal) and all ne’er (informal) never no one's: no one has / no one is nothing's: nothing has / nothing is o’clock: of the clock o’er: over ol’ old ought’ve: ought have oughtn’t: ought not oughtn’t’ve ...
The first English grammar, Bref Grammar for English by William Bullokar, published in 1586, does not use the term "auxiliary" but says: All other verbs are called verbs-neuters-un-perfect because they require the infinitive mood of another verb to express their signification of meaning perfectly: and be these, may, can, might or mought, could, would, should, must, ought, and sometimes, will ...
Two examples of affirmation include (1) John is here already [4] and (2) I am a moral person. [5] These two sentences are truth statements, and serve as a representation of affirmation in English. The negated versions can be formed as the statements (1 NEG) John is not here already and (2 NEG) I am not a moral person. (1) a.
Many types of elliptical construction are possible in English, resulting in sentences that omit certain redundant elements. Various examples are given in the article on Ellipsis. Some notable elliptical forms found in English include: Short statements of the form I can, he isn't, we mustn't. Here the verb phrase (understood from the context) is ...
The sentence can be given as a grammatical puzzle [7] [8] [9] or an item on a test, [1] [2] for which one must find the proper punctuation to give it meaning. Hans Reichenbach used a similar sentence ("John where Jack had...") in his 1947 book Elements of Symbolic Logic as an exercise for the reader, to illustrate the different levels of language, namely object language and metalanguage.
A complex sentence has one or more dependent clauses (also called subordinate clauses). Since a dependent clause cannot stand on its own as a sentence, complex sentences must also have at least one independent clause. In short, a sentence with one or more dependent clauses and at least one independent clause is a complex sentence.
A major sentence is a regular sentence; it has a subject and a predicate, e.g. "I have a ball." In this sentence, one can change the persons, e.g. "We have a ball." However, a minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence that does not contain a main clause, e.g. "Mary!", "Precisely so.", "Next Tuesday evening after it gets dark."